


Daniel

by transdimensional_void



Series: I Swallowed the Sun [1]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Angst, Bullying, Homophobia, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Minor Violence, Religion, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-23
Updated: 2014-11-23
Packaged: 2018-03-25 03:26:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3794899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/transdimensional_void/pseuds/transdimensional_void
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Phil's past still haunts him, and the memory of what might have been. (Inspired by the song "Daniel" by Bat for Lashes)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Daniel

It had rained today, heavy and insistent like a warning. That’s why he doesn’t want to sleep tonight, or one of the reasons.

 

Winter is only weeks away, and the air outside as he walks home from the tube station, tickles his nose with that distinct blend of sharp cold and wood smoke scent. The sky had been bright, blinding white all day, but he can see that the white is deepening to a sooty grey. He picks up his pace.

The clouds open when he is still two minutes from the safety of his flat. Fool that he is, he’d forgotten to take an umbrella when he left for work that morning. He is soaked through and shivering violently by the time he steps inside his front door. A hot shower and a change of clothes soon banish the shivering, but his sense of unease lingers on.

The memories are there, at the edges of his thoughts, waiting, always waiting for something to reach in and stir them up. Rain on a smoky winter day. His wet shirtsleeves clinging to his skin.

He fixes himself a cup of tea and puts on an old movie (not nostalgically old, but old old, something from his grandparents’ time.) The grainy, black and white people with their funny, clipped way of speaking seem so far removed from his reality. He lets himself be pulled into their world of wisecracking and unselfconscious cigarette smoking. For a while he is somewhere else.

But then the music swells, and the movie’s world is rolled away and replaced with curlicued letters announcing “The End,” and all at once he is just Phil again, seated on a lumpy couch in a tiny apartment in present day London. He shudders, though the radiators are on full-blast and the tea has warmed him through.

His eyelids are growing heavy, but he fights it. Sleep is the enemy. So he puts on another movie, and makes a cup of coffee and settles down for a long night of — he hopes — wakefulness.

 

_Everything around him is black and wide open space. He has a feeling that if he were to open his mouth and scream with all his strength, there would be no echo. The sound would be absorbed by the emptiness around him. He begins to run. From fear? No, he’s running because there is something out there. He just knows there is—_

_Across the room, a door opens, and the headmaster walks in, followed by someone else — a boy, wearing their school uniform, but Phil has never seen him before. The headmaster is speaking, something about a new student, but Phil isn’t listening because he’s accidentally caught the new boy’s eye, and they’re staring at each other from across the room, and he doesn’t know why his heart is pounding like it is, but the boy’s eyes are two deep wells and he is sinking—_

 

He wakes drenched in sweat. The room around him is dark and sweltering. For the space of four or five breaths, it’s still 2002, and he is lying in his bedroom in his parents’ house and there is a comforting warmth beside him. Then he comes fully awake, and he knows it’s 2014 and he’s fallen asleep on the couch despite the coffee and the movie. The blanket he had been wrapped in is crumpled on the floor beside him. The heat is turned up too high.

He is still very sleepy, and there’s no point in fighting it anymore. The dreams have started again, and they will keep coming no matter what he does. He swings his legs over the side of the couch, stands, stumbles toward his bedroom. When he slips beneath the duvet, the sheets are refreshingly cool. His last thought before he drifts off again is that he ought to have turned the heat down.

 

_There were five of them this time. There were often more, but five was plenty. He was still several blocks from home, but he wouldn’t have run home even if he was only a block away. Not since the first time had he given them the satisfaction of seeing him run._

_“Where’s your boyfriend?” one of them sneers. So they’d seen him with Dan. After that everything is flying fists and shoes thrusting against his gut and blood streaming from his nose, like always. He limps home where his brother calls from the front room, inviting him to come play Kingdom Hearts, but he doesn’t even answer. Straight upstairs to the bathroom, to wash away the blood and the bits of gravel stuck in his cheek where they’d ground it into the pavement._

_In the safety of his room, he reaches into the front pocket of his backpack to pull out his mobile. His parents had just gotten it for him last month, and he lived in constant fear that someone would find it and steal it from him._

_He has a single missed call. He checks the name: “Daniel” is written in pixelated black across the screen. He smiles, and his cheek throbs._

 

The buzzing of his phone alarm jolts him to alertness. He reaches for the phone and fumbles with it until the noise goes away. It’s 6:25 in the morning, and there isn’t even a hint of sunlight from the window. Must be cloudy again. There’s a dull ache in the side of his face that he refuses to acknowledge. He rolls out of bed and starts his day.

 

His mum calls him on his lunch break.

“Hello, love. Having a good day?”

“It’s all right,” he says, because it’s what she needs to hear from him. “You?”

“I’m having a wonderful day! I’ve been out  _shopping_.” Her voice holds a note of tense excitement, and he knows she wants him to be excited with her.

“I don’t suppose this has anything to do with the C-word?” he says.

“Oh, you know I hate it when you call it that. It sounds so vulgar. But yes! Which is why I was calling you, actually.” She pauses, not for long, but long enough for him to understand she is hesitating. “Are you coming home this year?”

Now it’s his turn to hesitate. He knows he should say yes. He really should, and then he should actually go. But it has been five years now since he’d been back, and every year he stays away seems to make going back all the harder.

“I— I’ll think about it.”

He’d never known that a silence could sound so disappointed. But when his mother speaks again, her voice is just as chipper as it had been before.

“You know we can always come there to you again, dearest. Just let me know in time so we can plan.”

“I will,” he assures her. 

“I love you. Take care,” she says. He tries to say the words back, but they catch on the lump in his throat. Why should his mum saying that she loves him make him want to cry? This is ridiculous.

“You too,” he manages, and then she’s gone.

 

It’s raining again by the time he leaves work, but at least today he has remembered his umbrella. He decides to stop at a coffee shop instead of going straight home. He’s brought his laptop with him, and after half an hour the caffeine buzz in his veins combines with the low buzz of human activity around him to drown out the clamor of thoughts in his head.

He stays there until late afternoon has become late night, ordering soup and a sandwich and several more coffees. But eventually one of the baristas passes by him, very pointedly mopping the floor, and he knows it’s time to leave.

At least today, when he gets home, he is warm and dry inside his thick coat. At least there’s that. All those coffees have made his hands so jittery he can barely fit the key in the lock on his front door. He lies awake for hours that night, but eventually the jitters give way to exhaustion, and sleep takes him again.

 

_It had taken him a week to get up the courage to talk to the boy. Daniel, he was called, or at least that’s what the headmaster had said. With his long fringe and row of wristbands up both arms, it had been immediately clear that he belonged to a different sort of crowd than a goofy kid like Phil. This was proven true by how quickly he was adopted by the kids who all had secret piercings and were obsessed with Linkin Park._

_But somehow Phil still found himself staring at Daniel from across the classroom when he was meant to be taking notes on cell respiration. The gentle curve of his neck as he bent over his desk… The soft fall of his fringe, obscuring his eyes and almost brushing the paper he scribbled on… The tension in his long fingers as he gripped the pen…_

_Phil might have just kept doing nothing but stare until they both graduated and moved on to university, if on that day the boy hadn’t looked up from his notes and, instead of turning his eyes toward the teacher at the front of the room, turned instead to look deliberately and directly at Phil._

_The classroom, the teacher, the other students, everything seemed to fall away, leaving just the two of them, two pairs of eyes locked across the room, one pair blue and the other the color of falling—_

_“You’re Daniel, aren’t you?”_

_Somehow, because he was lucky or because the gods had chosen to smile on him that day, somehow he had found the other boy alone, in a secluded corner of the school yard where the cool kids hid and smoked when they were cutting class. He wasn’t smoking, though. He was reading a book — a manga, Phil realized as he drew closer — seated on cold concrete and huddled up inside his school jacket._

_He’d looked up at the sound of Phil’s shoes crunching the gravel underfoot, and he’d smiled, and that was the moment that Phil knew he was well and truly fucked. Just that one smile, and they’d never even talked before, but something drew taut in Phil’s stomach and a sensation like a cold blade sliced through the middle of him._

_“I prefer Dan,” the boy had said and gestured toward the empty space beside him. “You’re in my chemistry class.”_

_The summer heat had lingered into September that year, and when Phil had sat down beside the other boy, he’d looked up into the bluest sky he’d ever seen in his life._

 

The next day is a Friday, and Phil has finally given in and said yes to being set up on a blind date by one of his co-workers.

“She’s really a lovely girl,” Angela had told him as they both got ready to leave that evening. “And brilliant to boot. She graduated with a first from St. Andrew’s.”

Phil had nodded and agreed that was extremely impressive and then he’d come home and showered and put on a nice shirt and trousers. They are just going to grab coffee, after all, not even dinner. It’s no big deal, but he can’t help feeling anxious about it. He hasn’t been on a date in over a year. He isn’t sure he remembers how. All the small talk, the getting-to-know-you questions, the fumbling attempts to stop being strangers, it all seems a little desperate, a little ridiculous to him. But it still beats another evening home alone.

She is already at the café when he arrives, settled in a corner booth with a cup in front of her. He recognizes her — after a few seconds of looking around — from the pictures Angela had shown him.

He makes his way over, and she catches sight of him and waves. He raises a hand to wave back, feeling ten times more nervous than before. She is  _very_  pretty.

“Hello! You must be Phil. I’m Anahita,” she says, standing up and holding out a hand. When he clasps it, it is unusually warm from having been cupped around a mug of hot chocolate.

“Nice to meet you,” he says, and then they sit, and the slow torture of the small talk begins.  _Where do you work? Oh, that must be exciting. How long have you lived in London? Oh, a while then. Any pets? Brothers and sisters? Read any good books lately?_

Angela had been right. She is brilliant. Her degree had been in Classics, but now she is a trainee lawyer. She is stunningly well-read and seems able to give an informed opinion on nearly any topic he brings up. She has this hair that falls in soft, dark waves all around her shoulders, and eyes like two onyx beads. Phil doubts he’s ever met another woman as beautiful in person.

The date goes well, or so he thinks. At the end of it, he even leans in and gives her a peck on the cheek, and she smiles in return, showing even, gleaming teeth. If he asks her for a second date, he guesses she will say yes.

The rain has finally stopped, so he makes his way home under clear skies — not that he can really see any stars. Not in the middle of London.

Still, it’s nice to look up and see the moon, full and high, bright against the velvety night blue, rather than a ceiling of orangeish clouds. It gives him a hopeful sort of feeling. The night feels full of possibility — or maybe that is simply a lingering positive mood from his date. It doesn’t matter. He feels good as he swings open the door of his flat, good enough that he suddenly makes the decision that he  _will_ go home for the holidays this year.

Quick, before he can lose his resolve, he pulls his phone from his pocket and dials his mother.

“Do you mean it, really?” she asks when he gives her the news.

“Yeah, I really do. I think… I just feel like it’s time.”

“Oh, Phil,” she says, and there are tears in her voice — happy ones.

He couldn’t have guessed, then, when he slides beneath his duvet that night, that there is any danger of the dreams returning. Everything feels too settled, too cozy, too safe, and he drops off to sleep with a smile curving his lips.

 

_“Who did this to you?”_

_They were the first words out of Dan’s mouth when he walked into Phil’s bedroom that afternoon. Phil was sitting on his floor, organizing his notes from that day’s Literature class, and he’d been so elated at the thought of Dan coming over that he’d already half forgotten about his black eye, swollen nose, and scraped cheek. He had stared at the other boy for several long moments before the light bulb turned on in his brain._

_“What? Oh, just some idiots from my old school. Hey, you have Williams for Literature, right? Do you have your notes from today’s lecture?”_

_Dan had completely ignored his questions. Eyes narrowing, he’d stalked across the room until he towered over Phil and then, to Phil’s startled surprise, he’d reached a hand down and cupped it around Phil’s cheek. For a nanosecond, Phil had thought he was about to kiss him, and his heart rate nearly reached blackout levels._

_But Dan — none too gently — instead had turned Phil’s face first to one side, then the other, and then he had frowned, his dark brows drawing together into a single, tense line._

_“Why?” he asked._

_It seemed a simple enough question. Why? Why had they chosen Phil, out of every kid in town, as the object of their torment? But it could also be, why, on this particular day, had they sought him out for a thrashing? Or, why had Phil let them, instead of running away like he easily could have? Or, why did anyone beat anyone up ever in the first place?_

_Phil looked down. Dan’s stare was so intense, so_ present _, it was hard to even look at him._

_“I don’t know.”_

_Dan had let go of him then, taken a few steps away._

_“So, this is your room then?” His tone had changed utterly, had become light and conversational, and Phil relaxed. The moment had passed. Dan wasn’t going to worry about it anymore._

 

Saturday is sunny, and Phil knows that should make him happy. He’d had a successful date the night before, and that too should be making him happy. And so, like a happy person would, he gets up and fixes a big breakfast and sits down to eat it while scrolling through his various social media feeds. And then, like a happy person would, he washes up and texts Anahita to tell her he had a lovely time and they should do it again soon. And, last of all, like a happy person would, he gets dressed and goes out and walks down to the park near his house to stare at the ducks in their pond. Because the weather is beautiful. And it would be such a waste.

He wonders how cold it has to be before ducks get cold, and then that reminds him of reading  _Catcher in the Rye_ when he was fourteen, and Holden Caulfield wondering where the ducks go in winter, and that is a worrying comparison, so he stops thinking about the ducks and instead looks around. There are a few parents around, with small children. A few elderly people on benches. A few couples, holding hands and appearing happy.

Suddenly irritated, Phil shoves his hands in his coat pockets and starts walking briskly along the edge of the pond. The farther he goes, the faster he walks until he is almost running, and he’s started to sweat under his thick, woolen coat. That only makes him more irritated, but he’s not irritated. He’s happy. He knows he is.

He stops, pulls his phone from his pocket. Anahita has texted him back. She wants to meet again on Sunday afternoon. There’s an exhibit of her friend’s work at an art gallery, and would he be interested in going? Of course he would. “Of course,” he types back because that is the normal thing to do. That is the healthy thing to do.

Her response appears on the screen almost at once, “Wonderful. I can’t wait!” He stares at the words. They are so cheerful and excited. And he is so  _not_ cheerful and excited. He’s not, but he should be. He locks the screen and shoves the phone into his pocket again.

It’s 10:30 in the morning on a fine, sunny Saturday morning, and Phil is miserable. He tilts his head back and squints up into the bright sky. The blue is thin, nothing like the deep azure he’d stared at on the day he’d first talked to Dan.

His heart clenches in his chest and a dizzy wave of panic washes over him. He’d let himself think Dan’s name. He’d let himself remember, and he wasn’t even sleeping now. The memories had seeped into his waking hours.

He spins on his heel, his eyes blindly raking across the scene before him. He needs to sit down, but he can’t seem to focus on his surroundings.

“Are you all right?” someone says beside him. He looks down, and there is a very small and wrinkle-lined face staring up at him. He blinks at the face, not quite comprehending the words. Then he feels a gentle tug on his sleeve, and he allows himself to be pulled over to a park bench and sat down upon it. Now that he is sitting down, he’s starting to feel calmer. He looks up at the elderly woman, who is regarding him with a concerned expression.

“Do you feel all right? Should I call someone for you?”

He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath.

“Thank you, but no. I’m all right. Just a…a momentary dizzy spell.” He attempts a grin. “Shouldn’t have skipped breakfast this morning.”

She squints at him in a very shrewd manner, but he can see she won’t ask him any more questions.

“A great big man like yourself should definitely not go around skipping meals,” she admonishes him. He nods and accepts a little more scolding. And after a while she tells him to take care and then strolls off down the path ringing the duck pond. Her gait is painfully slow. Phil is glad he doesn’t have to walk beside her. He’d have to take baby steps to try to keep pace.

Will he walk so slow when he is her age? It’s hard to imagine himself being that old, but then again when he was sixteen it had been impossible to imagine being twenty-eight. Yet here he is, with thirty looming ever closer, wishing to god he could just be sixteen again.

All right. There it is. He’s admitted it, but look: the sun is still shining, there are still children screaming and laughing all around him, the ducks are still swimming around in their pond. Oh god how he’d like to have that autumn back, when he was sixteen and there were still new episodes of “Buffy, the Vampire Slayer,” and Dan was there.

He closes his eyes and leans his head back, feeling the winter sun’s faint heat on the skin of his eyelids.

 

_They’d watched the fourth episode of the new series of Buffy together on the couch in his family’s living room. It was only the second time Dan had come over to his house, and it made him so nervous to have him there. What if his mum said something embarrassing? Or what if his brother decided to tell Dan every humiliating story about him he could think of? What if he said something that made Dan stop liking him, because he was at home and relaxed and not on his guard?_

_The episode was a sad one, all about a girl who dies despite Buffy’s attempts to save her. And Phil had thought that was important — that his heroine couldn’t save everyone, no matter how powerful she was. It made the show seem real somehow, despite the mythical monsters and cheesy special effects._

_He’d looked over at Dan, who had watched the entire show in silence. Had he liked it? Dan hadn’t watched the show before he’d met Phil, and Phil had been so nervous introducing it to him, worried that Dan would only see the cheese and not the heart, worried as always that Dan would suddenly realize just how lame Phil was and decide to stop being friends with him._

_“That was pretty good,” Dan had said, letting his head loll against the back of the couch, and turning just his eyes to look at Phil. Phil couldn’t keep his eyes from drifting down to the long line of Dan’s exposed throat. If Phil had been a vampire, Dan would have been in mortal danger. “I don’t want to go home yet,” Dan had continued, snapping Phil out of his Buffy-inspired fantasies._

_“What do you want to do?” Phil had asked, resolutely turning his gaze back to Dan’s eyes. When it found them, there was that look again, the one that he found so disturbing. Whenever you looked into Dan’s eyes, he was just so_ there _, like all of his attention had been focused into a single, laser-sharp point being beamed directly at you. He wanted to look away, but this time he wouldn’t let himself._

_“Let’s go out somewhere,” Dan had said. And he’d agreed, without knowing — without caring — where “somewhere” might possibly be._

 

“Are you sure you don’t want me to call someone for you, love?”

He’s brought round by the old lady’s voice beside him again. He opens his eyes and shoots her an apologetic smile.

“I’m really fine, ma’am. Perhaps I should just go home and, er, eat something.”

“Can you get there on your own? We could call you a taxi.” She’s placed one hand on the end of the park bench and is leaning toward him, perhaps to get a closer look. He wonders what she sees: a man, tall, late twenties, eyes blue, hair (dyed) black, skin as pale as humanly possible, wool coat, skinny jeans, and brightly colored converse. That was his physical description, but he wonders if she doesn’t see something different: a shameless drunkard, perhaps, or maybe just a lost little boy.

“I should be fine, thank you, really,” he says, getting to his feet to emphasize his point. She nods and admonishes him to take care again before turning and shuffling away. 

He turns away as well. The park is no place for getting lost in nostalgia anyway. If he is going to give all the way in, let himself be washed away on the tide of memories, he may as well drown in the comfort of his own home.

The flat is stifling hot when he returns, and he curses himself for forgetting to turn down the heat again. His bills are going to be eye-watering this month. He goes straight for the thermostat and gives the knob a savage wrench, hoping for some kind of catharsis in the violence of the movement.

Instead, he just feels sad. The thermostat has done nothing to deserve his abuse. He is the guilty one. It was all his fault. Everything had been his fault.

 

_The last night, the night before Dan had gone away forever, they had lain in Phil’s bed and held each other until the grey light at the window warned them they were in danger of being caught again. He still remembered the way Dan had trembled in his arms, the way his own tears had tasted as he kissed them off of Dan’s cheek._

 

He makes his way up to his bedroom. His bed is still unmade, rumpled and inviting in the slanting light of late morning.

 

_The first time Dan had crept into his bed beside him, how shocked he had been, how his blood had pounded in his ears—_

 

He lies down on top of the duvet. He hasn’t even taken the time to remove his coat or his shoes. There is no time. No, that’s not it. There’s  _too much_  time, his whole life in fact: a whole long life stretching empty before him, time enough to take off his shoes and coat and put them on again a million times. And on the millionth repeat it would still be a meaningless gesture.

 

_“Put on your coat. It’s going to rain,” Dan had told him as they stood in the front entrance, on the verge of going out “somewhere.”_

_“Nah, it’ll be fine. Let’s just go.” Phil had been too impatient, though he knew Dan was probably right. He could sense adventure — because that’s what being with Dan always felt like, adventure — and he was eager to taste it._

_Dan had looked like he wanted to argue, but then he had just shaken his head, grabbed Phil’s arm and pulled him out the door. The moment Dan’s fingers wrapped around his arm, it had felt as though the bottom had dropped out of Phil’s stomach. How could just the simple pressure of Dan’s fingers make him feel so breathless?_

_He had been so distracted by his sudden shortness of breath that it was several minutes before he noticed just how much purpose there was in Dan leading him. They were definitely going_ somewhere _, not just_ anywhere _. They had paused by a hedgerow in front of one of his neighbor’s houses, and Dan had finally let him go. He had watched, confused but full of anticipation, as Dan bent down and began rustling around beneath the bushes. At last he had come up with a plastic bag in one hand and a grin on his face._

_“Now we’re ready,” he had whispered. The dark all around them seemed to amplify the soft sound, giving it power and weight._

_“Ready for what?” Phil had whispered back, but Dan had just shaken his head and taken hold of Phil’s arm again._

_“Come on,” was all he’d said. And Phil had followed, of course._

_He hadn’t started doubting the wisdom of following Dan until about fifteen minutes later when they had paused in the middle of an unfamiliar street outside of an unfamiliar house._

_“Where are we?” A nervous ripple passed through Phil as he saw a shadow pass across a window in a nearby house._

_“Here,” Dan had replied, pulling something from the bag and holding it out to Phil. It was an egg carton. Suddenly, the knots in Phil’s stomach had pulled tight in a completely new and unpleasant way. What were they doing here?_

_“What—“ he began, but Dan had shushed him and then pointed at the house._

_“That, Philip, is the Mullen residence,” he had murmured, his voice even softer than before. “It is the home of Mr. and Mrs. Mullen and their little shit of a son, Timothy, who happens to be one of those motherfuckers who beat you up two weeks ago. We are going to egg that house, Phil.” He had reached out and opened the carton of eggs that Phil held. “And you are going to go first.”_

_Phil could still see the way those eggs had glowed faintly grey in the dull light of a cloudy suburban night. He could still remember the way his heart had fluttered in his throat as he’d reached for the first one, the way his fingers had hesitated for far too long, and Dan had let out an impatient sigh. But Phil was a good kid, had always been a good kid, and as harmless a prank as it seemed, he still knew it was wrong. Egging someone’s house was vandalism, and they could get in serious trouble for that._

_He had looked up at Dan, and that look had been there, the two eyes — black in this light — with the single concentrated gaze locked onto his face. It was like he could see Dan’s mind through those two black circles, the will urging him on, the words soothing him, letting him know it would be all right._

_He had picked up one of the eggs and closed his eyes and flung it as hard as he could at the brick side of the house. The crack and splatter of that first egg had been the most satisfying sound he’d heard in his entire life. Dan had let out a subdued whoop, scooped up a second and third egg and begun launching a rain of eggy terror down upon the house. Phil, suddenly released from all his earlier anxiety, had done the same. Two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight splats— before all the lights in the house came on, and then Dan had dumped the other four eggs out to smash on the pavement at their feet, and they’d turned and run for it._

_By the time they’d gotten back to Phil’s house, they were both wheezing hard and covered in a sheen of sweat. And they were laughing. Every gasping intake of air was expelled as a sharp breath of laughter. In the driveway of his parents’ house, Phil had doubled over, in exhaustion and mirth, and Dan had thrown his arms around him and they’d both dissolved in silent, shaking laughter._

_And then the strangest thing had happened. Dan’s arms around him had loosened, and Dan had stepped back, and Phil had looked up into those two dark circles and realized the expression in them was no longer one of amusement at all. And then the two dark rings had come closer and closer until they filled his entire vision, and Phil had closed his eyes and felt a tickling tendril of air against his lips, followed by the softest brush of skin. And just that one touch had made his whole body tingle._

_He’d sensed Dan leaning away, but that wasn’t what he wanted at all, so he’d leaned forward, and the second kiss had come from him. This one lasted longer, so long in fact that they both came away from it gasping. Phil’s head had felt so light he worried it might float away entirely._

_When they had looked at each other again, Phil had felt shy, but Dan had simply begun laughing again._

_“I’ve been wanting to do that since the first day I saw you in chemistry class,” Dan had said._

_“Really?” Phil had wanted to punch himself at how incredulous his voice had sounded. Dan had laughed again and nodded. “Me too,” Phil had whispered, glad the darkness hid his blush._

_Then he’d heard a rustling, the sound of a piece of paper being pulled from a pocket, and Dan was holding something out to him that shone faintly white in the black._

_“It’s a list,” he’d said. “Five names. Five addresses.” And as Phil watched, Dan pulled a pen from his pocket and drew a wobbly line through the first name on the list._

_“One down.”_

 

His phone is ringing, the vibrating whir in his pocket calling him back to present day again. He pulls it out, the motion almost a programmed response to the ringing. It’s his mum.

“Hello?” His voice sounds strained and scratchy to his own ears.

“Are you all right?” He’s getting tired of hearing that question today. No, he’s not all right.

“I’m fine, Mum. What’s up?”

There’s a silence on the other end. Then she starts speaking very quickly.

“It’s just, I’m worried that you’re rushing yourself, Phil. You don’t have to come home, if you aren’t ready to, I mean, and I don’t want you to feel like you have to, just for us.”

“It’s been five years. I wouldn’t really consider that rushing, Mum.” The words come out more sarcastically than he’d meant them too.

“I know, I know. It’s just… Are you sure? It just feels really sudden to me. Did something happen?”

The problem is that his mum knows him too well. Somehow, across all those kilometers, she has sensed that he is lying to himself. 

“No, nothing’s happened, Mum. I just thought about it, and I think it’s time.” He could tell her about Anahita, but why get her hopes up when he knows the relationship is already doomed?

“Okay. Okay, I’ll stop bothering you. How’s your Saturday going? Any plans?”

He suppresses a sigh. She expects him to make small talk at a moment like this. He knows, though, that the small talk is really a test. She’s still sounding him out, trying to find out what is really going on with him.

“I went out to the park earlier. Met a nice elderly woman.” It’s the truth, if a stripped-down version of it.

“Oh, that’s good, I guess. All right, then, I won’t keep you. Just make sure to get your Christmas list to me soon. I don’t want to have to do all my shopping the week before!”

“I will, Mum.”

When she’s gone, he lets the phone slip from his fingers and onto the bed beside him. He probably shouldn’t even have answered, but the resultant guilt would have only made matters worse. And now he’s doubly committed himself to going up north for Christmas. And isn’t that great?

He’ll see his mum and dad, and his brother and sister-in-law, and the neighbors and all his old school friends, and his bedroom and his bed, where he last saw Dan, last held him and kissed him and last spoke his name.

 

_“My parents took away my phone,” Dan had whispered when he’d slipped into bed beside Phil that night. “They said they’re turning off our internet too. They think it’s a bad influence.”_

_Phil hadn’t known what to say, so he’d just slid his arms around him and pulled him close._

_“I’ll find a way,” Dan had whispered after a long time. In the close, warm dark of his room it had sounded like the truth._

 

Phil doesn’t want to keep lying on his bed all day. He isn’t a dramatic person, and it seems like a silly thing to do. And besides, his stomach is growling. He checks his phone. It’s nearly noon now.

He gets up and goes to the kitchen. There’s food in his refrigerator. His oven works, and he has running water. What right does he have to be unhappy about his lot in life? None whatsoever. He repeats this to himself until he is filled with enough indignant energy to pull out some vegetables and pork and cook up a decent semblance of a stir-fry for his lunch. As he sits at his coffee table in front of his tv, he thinks that maybe he’ll use the afternoon for something productive. Maybe he’ll make a video. He’d started making YouTube videos ages ago and had had some moderately successful ones. In recent years he’d somewhat lost interest in it and hadn’t been posting very regularly. Maybe it was time to show his subscribers some love again.

When he’s done clearing away the lunch things, he sits down in front of his laptop and starts writing out a script for a video idea he’d been playing around with recently.

 

_“How do you come up with so many weird ideas?” Dan had said once, when Phil had shown him a movie script he’d been writing. Phil had always loved film and dreamed of one day directing his own movie. This particular one was meant to be a horror film revolving around a murderous rabbit._

_Phil had blushed and shrugged, and Dan had put a hand on his shoulder and said, “I meant weird in a good way. This script is really good, you know. I can actually imagine it being a real movie.”_

_When Dan had gone home later Phil had sat down at his computer and finished the entire script in one sleepless night. It was like he’d suddenly been filled with all this energy. The ideas had seemed to pour straight from his brain and out through his fingertips. In the morning, he’d been exhausted but so excited to show Dan the finished product._

 

He pauses in the middle of his writing to stretch and make himself a cup of tea. When he checks the time it’s later than he’d realized. He’s been writing for hours already. His joints feel stiff when he stands. It strikes him after a moment that the room has grown unusually dark. It’s not even 3:00 yet, after all. He goes to the window, and that’s when he sees that the clouds have returned. Out in the street, the branches of the trees are waving in a rising wind, and even as he watches the first few fat raindrops smack against the window pane.

He shivers and pulls the curtain shut.

 

_The headmaster had closed the door to his office with a soft click, before walking around his desk and seating himself behind it. Phil had been sat across from him, with that wide desk in between._

_“Now, Philip, you know what you’ve done is wrong, and I know what you’ve done is wrong. But I won’t deny you were provoked.”_

_Phil had hung his head, unwilling to meet the man’s steady gaze._

_“I just wish you had told us about it. If those boys were giving you trouble, why didn’t you tell someone?”_

_There was no answer to that question. He almost couldn’t believe that the headmaster bothered asking it. How could he have told someone? What would they have done?_

_“You aren’t going to answer me, I suppose. I just want you to know, Philip, if anything like that happens to you again, you can come to me. I’m here to help you, you know?”_

_Phil had nodded. It was the correct thing to do._

_“Very well then. Now, this other thing,” and the man had cleared his throat several times, signaling his discomfort with the topic. “This thing with Howell. Well, I suppose teenagers will experiment, now won’t they? It’s just in your nature. I wouldn’t worry about it too much, if I were you. Many young men go through, er, phases like this and still grow up to be fine citizens contributing to society. That being said, you and Mr. Howell have given your parents enough to worry about as it is, so I think it’s time you gave it a rest, don’t you?”_

_Throughout this little speech, Phil had sat with his hands gripped tight between his knees to keep them from trembling and his eyes fixed on his hands to keep them from looking at the headmaster. He had had to bite his lip to keep from screaming at the man. How dared he? How dared he tell Phil it was just a phase? What did he know about the way the sunlight turned the brown of Dan’s eyes to molten gold? What did he know of the fluttering feeling in the pit of Phil’s stomach when Dan leaned in to kiss him? What did this man, with his drooping mustache and watery eyes, know of the way every inch of Phil’s skin seemed to catch fire at Dan’s slightest touch?_

_But Phil had nodded, because it was the correct thing to do._

 

It only takes him about an hour to film the video, and then another couple of hours to edit it. When he watches back the final version, he’s pretty pleased with it. It’s really just another video of him talking at the camera, telling a story about a few strange people he’s met recently. Hopefully his subscribers will find it worth the wait.

 

_That night they’d visited the fifth and final house. It was the home of Jeremy Owen, who was the oldest of the little gang that had decided to target Phil. He was also its unofficial leader. Jeremy Owen was eighteen and had his own car, and it had been this that had given Dan his inspiration._

_“You know, you say that I’m always coming up with weird ideas, but you have to admit this idea of yours is verging on insanity,” Phil had said before they’d left his house that evening. It had started to occur to Phil that Dan always came over to Phil’s and never invited him back to his place._

_“Don’t forget your coat this time. It’s definitely going to rain,” was all Dan had said._

_But Phil had just rolled his eyes and pushed Dan out the door. Dan always said it was going to rain, and it never did, did it? Sure there had been menacing clouds all afternoon, but they weren’t going to be out for long. They’d made most of their preparations already — all the notes carefully written out in faked handwriting, and the_ other _items as well._

_“It’s the perfect way to take all of his homophobic bullshit and shove it right back in his face,” Dan had explained with a smirk. Phil still couldn’t quite believe that he’d actually agreed to go along with the idea. But Dan had been looking at him in that certain way that made him realize that he’d be sneaking into Phil’s bed again later that evening, and the thought of that had sent every other thought sailing from Phil’s mind._

_And now, there they were, outside Jeremy Owen’s house where his car, his pride and joy, sat in the drive. It was late — late enough that they’d had to sneak out of Phil’s house without his parents seeing. The street the Owens lived on was quiet, and the windows of all the houses were dark. Smoke rose from several of the chimneys. It was late November now, and the cold had really set in._

_They tried the car doors first, but of course they were locked. Dan had been prepared for this. As Phil glanced nervously behind them, Dan pulled a bent-out-of-shape wire hanger from underneath his coat and slid it down into the space between the car window and the door. After a long minute of scraping and clacking noises that Phil was sure everyone could hear for miles around, Dan finally managed to get the driver’s side door unlocked and opened. They climbed inside and got to work._

_Hiding all the little notes took the longest — under the seat, in the glove box, wedged between the cushions in the backseat, and in twenty or thirty other places where Jeremy would still be running across them months later. A couple dozen little notes that said things like, “We had gay sex here” or “We fucked in your back seat” and, Dan’s personal favorite that he had laughed a full five minutes after writing, “Thank you, Jeremy Owen, for helping me lose my anal virginity.”_

_And then, to really drive the point home, they’d bought several boxes of condoms and were now strewing them, wrappers torn open and condoms yanked out of shape to make them look used, all across the seats._

_It was, in the end, a pretty cheap prank. There would be no lasting damage to Jeremy Owen’s property or person. But it would infuriate him, and as much as he might tease Dan about it, Phil actually thought it was a brilliant idea for turning the bully’s own intolerant disgust against him._

_They’d just about finished, when Dan’s eyes had appeared over the back of the driver’s seat, and he had said, “We could actually just do it, you know. Right there, in the back seat.”_

_Phil had felt his heart stop. He was frozen in place for a full thirty seconds, just staring at Dan. There was an uneven light shining through the car windows from a street lamp, and it cast Dan’s face half in shadow. He didn’t look like he was joking. Phil could feel his heartbeat in every cell of his body. Sure they’d fooled around in his bed a lot and had even gotten off together a few times, but he and Dan had never had sex, or at least not_ real _sex. He’d never had sex with anyone, for that matter. Was Dan really suggesting that their first time be right now, here in the back seat of Jeremy Owen’s car? Had he lost his mind?_

_But then Dan had laughed, and Phil had let out the breath he'd been holding. It was just a joke. He was just joking._

_Somewhere, not too far away, a door slammed. Both their heads whipped around toward the sound, and they sat paralyzed for a millisecond. Then, swiftly and quietly as they could, they both slid from the car, eased the doors shut behind them, and sprinted away from the scene of their silly crime._

_The rain had broken only moments after they left the Owens’ house, and Phil had cursed silently to himself. Dan was never going to let him hear the end of this._

_By the time they had reached Phil’s house again, he was soaked through and his teeth were chattering with the cold. His whole body was shaking uncontrollably. He’d had to hand his keys to Dan to unlock the door and let them in the house because he couldn’t hold his hands still enough to fit the key in the lock._

_“I told you—“ Dan had started when they were inside at last, but Phil had cut him off._

_“Sh-shut up. I n-need t-to ch-ch-change.”_

_“What you need’s a hot bath,” Dan had retorted. After he’d peeled off his own sopping coat and hung it in the hall, he’d dragged Phil upstairs to the bathroom and run him a hot bath, and neither of them had thought to suggest that Dan should leave and let Phil bathe in peace._

_And later, when they were both warmed up and changed into dry clothes, Dan hadn’t even pretended that he was planning to sleep in the sleeping bag on Phil’s floor. Instead, he’d climbed straight into Phil’s bed, even before Phil was in it, and then he’d looked up at him with those eyes, and smiled, and patted the empty space beside him._

 

Phil isn’t sure how long he’s been standing in a dark room staring at nothing. He’d posted his video and been pleased at how quickly the view count had gone up. He’d started scrolling through some of the comments, but the torrential downpour outside had distracted him. He’d gone back to the window, pulled aside the curtain, and watched as darkness fell through the rain storm.

But now he looks out the window again and realizes that the darkness has long finished falling, and he is still stood there, his eyes fixed on nothing. The old saying suggested that time healed all wounds, but Phil had decided that the one wound time could never heal was hope.

Because hadn’t he dutifully kept up his ancient hotmail account? And didn’t he still have his MySpace, though it had ceased to be a relevant social media platform years and years ago? And hadn’t he fought the phone companies tooth and nail to let him keep that same phone number that they’d assigned him when he got his very first mobile, even when he’d had to change service to a different provider? It was pointless. It was all pointless, he knew, but it hadn’t stopped him from doing it.

Maybe his old headmaster had been right, and he’d just been going through a phase. Maybe that’s all love is, just a phase you go through until you get it out of your system, and then — thankfully — never have to bother with it again. Maybe that’s why it seemed that every love since Dan had come to him stillborn, over before it had even had a chance. Maybe he’d been through with love already when he was sixteen, on the night that Dan had left him with a promise and a lingering kiss.

But somewhere, in the depths of a box shoved to the back of a drawer, he still has his Nokia 3410 that has Dan’s old mobile number programmed in under the name “Daniel.”

 

_When Phil had woken the next morning, Dan was still in the bed beside him, nestled up against his side. The sight of him there, face smoothed in sleep, his breathing deep and even, had given Phil the sensation that his chest had been cracked open and was being filled with white-hot light. The light spilled out into his every vein, spread into the tiniest capillaries until it had squeezed itself inside every cell in his body, but somehow even then there was still more light, and still more of him to be filled by it._

_“I love you,” he had whispered, though he knew Dan was still asleep and couldn’t hear. The words had tasted hot on his tongue, like they were burning themselves there, a permanent pattern of speech settling in for endless repetition. He had wondered if he leaned down and whispered the words in Dan’s ear, would they brand themselves there as well, to be repeated over and over again inside Dan’s brain?_

_He had bent down and placed his lips against Dan’s ear, but his breath had tickled, and Dan had giggled and then come awake._

_“What are you_ doing _?” he’d asked in a tone of mock-annoyance._

_“Waking you up,” Phil had replied. “I thought you might sleep the whole day away.”_

_“Shut up. It’s a Saturday. There’s no reason to get up if I don’t want to,” Dan had answered before rolling away and treating him to a chorus of loud fake snoring noises._

_“My mum or brother could come barging in here at any moment,” Phil had pointed out. “Or is that not reason enough?”_

_That had brought Dan upright again, and without another word he’d gotten out of bed — still naked, Phil blushed to see — and gathered up his clothes and started dressing._

_“I didn’t mean—“ Phil had started, but Dan waved him to silence._

_“I know you didn’t, but I’ve just remembered my own mum asked me to be home early today. They’ve got a church luncheon or something that they want me to go to.”_

_Phil knew Dan’s family was religious (and his wasn’t), but Dan had never talked much about it. Phil had figured it must not be a very big part of his life. He was on the verge of asking more questions, when a knock on the door and his mum’s quiet voice had interrupted._

_“Phil, I need to see you and Daniel out here immediately. No arguments.”_

 

His phone is ringing again. When he checks the name, he isn’t too surprised to see that it’s his mum.

“Really, I’m fine,” are the first words out of his mouth when he picks up.

“I know you are, sweetie, I do, but… The truth is there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you, and I just didn’t know how.”

He pauses to process that. A million different possibilities pour through his brain, but he shoves them all to the side.

“All right. What is it?”

“Well, your father and I have been thinking…and we’d like to sell the house and move elsewhere. Somewhere with more sun preferably.”

Somehow that hadn’t been one of the million possibilities he’d prepared himself for.

“Don’t tell me you’re going to be that stereotypical middle-aged British couple with a retirement home in Portugal,” he groans after a moment.

She laughs at that.

“Maybe,” she says, but then her tone turns serious. “I know you don’t like coming back here, Phil. I know being in this house makes you unhappy, so I was thinking… You see, we’ve already put the house on the market. By next Christmas we’ll already be in the new one, so if you’d like to wait until then—“

“Mum, I’m glad you’re telling me this, but,” he pauses, takes a deep breath, “I really do think it’s time I came back, especially if you’re going to sell the house. I should spend at least one more Christmas there.”

“Really, Phil?” She sounds so hopeful, and he wonders briefly how many times his mother has been wounded by hope over the course of her life.

“Yes, really,” he says, and the strange thing is, he means it. Because for five years now he’s stayed away, hoping that the distance will make the memories fade faster, yet here he is again, another rainy autumn and another debilitating attack of nostalgia. Going home will be difficult, he knows, if only because it had stopped feeling like home all those years ago, if only because when Dan had left he’d taken the idea of home with him. “I’ll send you my Christmas list tomorrow.”

 

_They’d been seen._

_Not last night, at the Owens’, but on that first night when they’d carelessly egged Timothy Mullen’s house early in the evening. And someone had strung together that event with the other pranks played on the members of Timothy’s friend group and the incident from last night and decided that_ something must be done about this.

_So Phil’s parents and Dan’s parents had been called, and the school as well, just for good measure. And they’d only managed to escape charges of criminal mischief because Dan had pointed out that the other boys were guilty of assault, and Phil’s mum had become livid at the revelation that all of Phil’s mysterious injuries were these boys’ doing._

_But nothing had been able to stop everyone from figuring out that Dan and Phil were_ together _. Phil’s parents took the news with nonchalance, but Dan’s had reacted with weeping and gnashing of teeth. To think that_ their _son,_ their _precious boy, made in the image of God, had been engaging in_ those _sorts of vile practices— But then it had all gotten too Biblical, and Phil hadn’t really been able to follow the stream of their horrified utterances. All he’d been able to gather was that they were forbidden to meet, ever again._

_As if that could have stopped them. For three months after that, their relationship had gone underground, assisted by the blind eye that Phil’s parents had happily turned to the busy traffic in and out their front door in the middle of the night. But eventually Dan had been caught and his freedom so restricted they’d been reduced to only seeing one another in school. And then even that had been taken away because Dan’s parents had decided to send him away to some sort of reform camp, presumably to pray the gay away or be scared straight or something along those lines._

_But Dan was very resourceful. He’d managed to sneak a mobile into camp with him, and he and Phil would stay up late at night sending dirty texts._

_It had seemed they had them beat, that love had triumphed, that they would win out in the end. Until Dan had got back from the camp to find their house had been sold, and they were moving, his parents wouldn’t tell him where._

_And Dan had sneaked into Phil’s bedroom one last time, and lain in his arms and sobbed, and promised he would find a way._

 

Sunday morning dawns cloudy again. Phil tries not to mind. 

As he lies in bed, still half in dream, he wonders if he should just go ahead and cancel his plans for the afternoon. The sooner he ends things with Anahita, the fewer hurt feelings there will be. But the nagging little voice at the back of his head tells him he should give her a chance. He can’t keep rejecting every potential love simply because they aren’t Dan.

Besides, how much of his memories are real anyway? How many of these things had he really felt at the time, and how many of them had been edited in each year when he pulled out the old movie in his head and played it back again? How much of this obsession is love and how much of it is a convenient excuse for being dissatisfied with life?

He rolls over, toward the window. It’s cloudy out, but a sort of milky pale light filters through the curtains.

Somewhere out there Dan seems to have moved on with his life. Somewhere out there he has probably found someone new to love. Perhaps he is even married, with a couple of kids. Phil wonders what kind of dad Dan would make. But it’s beside the point. Somewhere out there, Dan may be happy. He may be so happy that he has completely forgotten Phil, or thinks of him only rarely, as a distant, troubled adolescent memory. He may be so happy that he sees no reason at all to dig up Phil’s old e-mail address, or his phone number, or check his MySpace account. That is the possibility that Phil has always been the most afraid of — that Dan is happy. And isn’t that just messed up?

It’s a cloudy day, with a moisture in the air that hints at further rain, but there is still sunlight, of a sort — faint and cold, but there.

Phil sits up, swings his legs over the side of the bed and stands.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally published on tumblr


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